The Sunday News
It’s not every month or even every year that Zimbabwean filmmakers get to produce a film that leaves audiences and the film sector itself talking about it. Once there was Yellow Card, then Lobola then Playing Warriors and then . . . . . . well, the list dries up quickly.
Anyway I just finished watching Escape, the new local movie produced by Joe Njagu and Agnieszka Piotrowska and features an array of local stars including Eddie Sandifola, Selma Mtukudzi, Stuart Sakarombe and Eunice Tafa. I must quickly say that I fell in love with the cinematography right from the first shot. The pictures were brilliantly composed, balanced and showed a lot of creativity. A big thumbs up to Joe Njagu there. The sound too was good. In fact, to be honest, I found nothing to fault technically about the whole film. It set quite a good standard for other local filmmakers to follow. It also showed the right direction Zimbabwean films should be going.
However, there are a lot of holes in the story itself. And some disturbing images for a Zimbabwean film. I know we’re all living in a global world and that we should be aiming to produce for the global consumer. But after watching the film I was left asking the following questions? Was it a Zimbabwean story I was watching? Was it the depiction of Zimbabwean life real that was rolling past the screen? For starters I found the coincidence in the film too unbelievable – too contrived. What are the chances that someone coming from London to look for his long lost father in Zimbabwe can fly straight into a hotel that his late father used to own? What are the chances that someone who left Africa very young and grew up believing he is an African-American can come to Africa and just decide to consult a n’anga to find a missing person? Or person the n’anga scene was just placed in to ridicule African tradition and culture?
I found the love scenes in the film too daring. Bravo to the actors, and especially the actress, Nothando Lobengula. Her scenes are not bad but were most of them necessary? After watching the film I understood why the women film makers association made some noise about it. The love scenes bordered on pornography or at least they looked like scenes from a soft porn movie. But what was their use and purpose? That is the big question. Were the scenes there to drive any plot? Or to develop any characters? Or perhaps the scenes were placed to serve another hidden purpose? Was it a strategy to sell the film through sex? Honestly, I believe African stories can still be powerful and pack in audiences without using any cheap sex scenes to try and keep the audience interested.
I also found it really hard to believe that a young man comes into Zimbabwe and every woman he meets throws herself at him. I have always thought Zimbabwean women are hard to impress and have manners! Of course the young man in the movies is very good looking, but is that what our women have become? Too desperate to get out of this country that they now throw themselves at any man who may look like a cheap ticket out of the economic challenges we are in. I believe Zimbabwean films should speak about us, represent us, elaborate on our beliefs and values.
While Agnieszka Piotrowska wrote the Zimbabwean story there are some elements she brought in that are alien to Zimbabwean culture which somehow raises the old question about who is the best person to write stories about us. Maybe, just maybe, the title Escape means escaping from conservative and myopic public expectations. Perhaps it means creativity escaping and flying into a free space where a story should not be confined by cultures and other parameters that normally seek to imprison it. The film is available in the street. I bought mine from a newspaper vendor.
